Sunday, 1 July 2012

The Big One For One Drop


Here's the 'roster' for the WSOP #55 The Big One For One Drop Event that is currently underway at the Rio Hotel:


Bobby Baldwin
Frederic Banjout
Bob Bright
Ilya Bulychev
Roland De Wolfe
Tom Dwan
Jonathan Duhamel
David Einhorn
Antonio Esfandiari
Phil Galfond
Bertrand Grospellier
Philipp Gruissem
Giovanni "Malibu" Guarascio
Phil Ivey
Eugene Katchalov
Cary Katz
Jens Kyllönen
Guy Laliberté
Ben Lamb
Tom Marchese
Jason Mercier
Michael Mizrachi
John Morgan
Daniel Negreanu
Paul Newey
Chamath Palihapitiya
Bill Perkins
Paul Phua
Brian Rast
Vivek Rajkumar
Tobias Reinkemeier
Andrew Robl
Phil Ruffin
Rick Salomon
Nick Schulman
Noah Schwartz
Erik Seidel
Mike Sexton
Dan Shak
Talal Shakerchi
Mikhail Smirnov
Justin Smith
Brandon Steven
Sam Trickett
Haralabos Voulgaris
Richard Yong
Gus Hansen
Phil Hellmuth

With each player paying a massive $1,000,000 to enter (Minus Hansen and Hellmuth Jr who both qualified via satellites) the prize pool will consist of over $42,000,000 with the victor taking home a cool 18 Mil. Since hearing about this event and seeing the pros talk about it on their social networking accounts i have been extremely anxious to see the field and watch the play unfold. It's still early days but so far the action is as epic as i was  expecting. I just watched Erik Seidel lay down a hand pre-flop after having his 6-bet re-raised all in by Vivek Rajkumar, not something you see everyday! 

The Charity

Besides the big names and the card playing, this event is a lot about the charity. $5.5 million has been taken from the buy-in money to be given to the OneDrop.org charity and along with this the WSOP abolished the usual house fees that would normally apply to such an event. 

This kind of event is great to see and with all the money to be won in the game of poker it is pleasing that a thought is spared for those who need it more. Among other things, the One Drop charity helps give access to water and develop sanitation projects across the world in areas that lack this life-sustaining resource. The founder of the charity, Guy Laliberté, will be participating in the tournament and i wish him, along with all of the other player, the best of luck. Lets see some poker!


Coverage of the event can be seen here: